Stage collapse prior to Radiohead concert in Toronto leaves one dead and three injured

Radiohead’s scheduled performance in Toronto this past Saturday — what would’ve been their first show in the city in roughly four years — was cancelled following a fatal stage collapse at Downsview Park. The collapse occurred at around 4 PM the same day and left one person dead and three people injured. One of the injured was transported to Sunnybrook Hospital with a “serious but non-life-threatening head injury,” according to the CBC, and two others sustained minor injuries that allowed them to forgo significant medical treatment. The one fatality has since been revealed to be Radiohead’s drum technician, Scott Johnson, 33, from Doncaster, England. Radiohead’s website currently offers this statement in reaction:

“We have all been shattered by the loss of Scott Johnson, our friend and colleague. He was a lovely man, always positive, supportive and funny; a highly skilled and valued member of our great road crew. We will miss him very much. Our thoughts and love are with Scott’s family and all those close to him.”

Investigators from the Toronto police and the provincial Ministry of Labour are still trying to determine what exactly caused the stage’s collapse and specifically whether safety standards were properly followed by staff working at the event. One witness describes a crackling sound, followed by twisting and snapping of the stage’s back scaffolding. Also, in contrast to the widely-publicized stage collapse last year at a Sugarland concert in Indiana, the weather was reportedly calm at the time of the incident.

Radiohead’s scheduled performance in Toronto this past Saturday — what would’ve been their first show in the city in roughly four years — was cancelled following a fatal stage collapse at Downsview Park. The collapse occurred at around 4 PM the same day and left one person dead and three people injured. One of the injured was transported to Sunnybrook Hospital with a “serious but non-life-threatening head injury,” according to the CBC, and two others sustained minor injuries that allowed them to forgo significant medical treatment. The one fatality has since been revealed to be Radiohead’s drum technician, Scott Johnson, 33, from Doncaster, England. Radiohead’s website currently offers this statement in reaction:

“We have all been shattered by the loss of Scott Johnson, our friend and colleague. He was a lovely man, always positive, supportive and funny; a highly skilled and valued member of our great road crew. We will miss him very much. Our thoughts and love are with Scott’s family and all those close to him.”

Investigators from the Toronto police and the provincial Ministry of Labour are still trying to determine what exactly caused the stage’s collapse and specifically whether safety standards were properly followed by staff working at the event. One witness describes a crackling sound, followed by twisting and snapping of the stage’s back scaffolding. Also, in contrast to the widely-publicized stage collapse last year at a Sugarland concert in Indiana, the weather was reportedly calm at the time of the incident.

As you may have heard, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is expanding the list of used domain name extensions from the current 22 old favorites to a whole host of words that will follow a period that itself will follow any given number of letters and/or numbers. This is exciting stuff people: we could change the name of this very site to tinymixtapes.boners if we wanted to in the very near future.

But since this is a story about music, and how this domain name extension expansion is going to impact the industry, let’s talk about two of the most sought-after extensions up for grabs: .music and .tickets. Since the application process began, ICANN has received eight applications for .music and five for the .tickets extension. The reason for the low numbers, considering how much influence the rights holders for these extensions could wield, is the whopping application fee of $185,000. TMT won’t be getting that name change after all…

So who’s in the running? Not surprisingly, it’s a heady mix of trade groups and megasites. Google and Amazon want the .music designation so they can make their sites the hubs for artists and labels, tapping in easily to their existing retail structures. An applicant called Far Further represents a host of industry trade groups and is favored to win the rights to the extension. It’s presumed they’ll do the bidding of groups like the RIAA and use the designation to police the internet, doling it out only to sites that are ‘reputable’ and not involved in any form of piracy (even when said piracy is what makes an artist famous, marketable, and rich in the first place).

In December or January, ICANN will be done going through all of the applications. If there’s more than one candidate who has successfully met a set of unspecified criteria, the group that is deemed the most community-based application will win. Barring that, ICANN will hold an auction and probably buy a yacht with the ridiculous amounts of money it will haul in exchange for a word preceded by a period.

I haven’t seen Tim for a few years now but that still didn’t lessen the impact of his passing. He was the drummer of AMC for many years. He was absolutely instrumental in whatever sound we had. His style was absolutely unique and as an artist no one could match what he did. He was a good friend to so many people and will be missed. What an absolute loss. I wish all the best to his wife Jude and his daughter Dixie. I have spent all day in a fog thinking about him.

In 1999, I was playing Pokemon Yellow and listening to boy bands and collecting Beanie Babies. Rocket Power premiered. Freaks and Geeks premiered. The Flaming Lips released The Soft Bulletin, and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy released I See a Darkness.

In 1999, Bailterspace released Solar.3, the last new album they’d release before announcing a hiatus in 2004. The New Zealand noise rock group had been recording since 1987, first as Nelsh Bailter Space, then simply as Bailterspace, and the band garnered comparisons to the likes of Sonic Youth and gained a reputation for intense live shows. The members of Bailterspace didn’t move to the mountains to live as hermits in 2004 — in fact, they subsequently put out a best-of compilation and even played a few shows. They just quit recording new albums.

Until now. Bailterspace has announced Strobosphere, their first new album in 13 years, which will see worldwide release on Fire Records. They’ve shared the first single, “No Sense”, and it demonstrates that the band’s just as noisy as ever. Look for the record on August 21.

Strobosphere tracklist:

01. Things That We Found
02. Strobosphere
03. Blue Star
04. Polarize
05. No Sense
06. Meeting Place
07. Island
08. OP1
09. Live by the Ocean
10. Dset
11. Would We Share

Few people know that The Prodigy’s 1996 smash hit song “Firestarter” was actually written about Dan Deacon to commemorate the barn-burner nature of his dance party-style live shows. And with a new record on the way this August, fans of dancing + arson around the world (by which I mostly mean America!) will be happy to learn that Dan “The Firestarter” Deacon has added a bunch more fall fall tourdates to his itinerary. But as opposed to the giant, cumbersome, aesthetically hideous, 14-man ensemble he toured with for the Bromst (TMT Review) shows, for this run, he’s wisely striping things down to a pair drummers (Jeremy Hyman of Boredoms/Ponytail and Kevin O’Meara of Videohippos, America producer Chester Endersby Gwazda on additional electronics, and hologram Rick Wakemans for everything else.

Additionally, Deacon has also revealed the cover art for America, and I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed that Squeo put it up top for you. [Ed: sure thing, pal!] As you can (hopefully) see, it features a photograph by Richard Endres of Lake Placid lookin’ all “placid.” And according to Domino, anyone who pre-orders the album (on CD, vinyl, or download) will be sent a two foot x three foot flag of that same image — just like the one that graces the “Lots” single, which I’ve thoughtfully embedded below. Deacon is encouraging fans to take photographs of their flags “waving, trailing, flapping or resting somewhere significant and share [them] with us on Tumblr and/or Instagram with the hash tag #dandeaconamerica” in order to be “automatically entered in DAN DEACON WINNABLE FLAG PHOTO CONTEST” (more contest details here). Not to be outdone, I’ve also decided that readers of Tiny Mix Tapes should take photos of themselves reading this Dan Deacon news story and post those on Tumblr and Instagram with the hashtag #tmtCANCUNvacation2012. We’ll pick the best one and offer the winner… that’s right! An unspecified, unacknowledged, unpaid staff job at Tiny Mix Tapes